SUSANNE SASIC
Friday, November 7th, 2014— I travel all the time for my job, and sometimes take photographs. I bought a decent camera for work to document my show designs but wound up using it more to entertain myself while traveling. I take photos looking out of windows on planes and moving vehicles, or from hotel rooms. I like a distant vantage point. I don’t carry a camera with me on the street in Tokyo or Paris or London, only in emptier cities without landmarks. I look for low horizons, big skies, anonymous buildings, empty streets and lone figures. No monuments, or interesting personalities, and not a travelogue.
I always wanted to travel when I was a kid, by now I’ve been all over the place. It’s the best part of my job. I don’t get to choose where I go, it feels random but it’s limited to locales where a big rock band might play a show and draw an audience, which still leaves a large part of the world untouched. I rarely travel on my own time. I might stay a while in a city I like when a job happens to end there, or go visit friends in a distant place, but I won’t be exploring the Amazon jungle on my time off. Growing up in the ‘70s the Nixon/China TV news left an indelible impression but China is one place I’ve never been, I will have to make my own way there eventually. I like crowded cities not nature. Walking all day long in a frantically busy city is the best possible day off when I’m working, the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other all day long on a city sidewalk is meditative and energizing at the same time.
I’ve always liked to draw, photography in the pre-digital age was never immediate enough for me in comparison. Digital photography is now so immediate as to be instantly everywhere all the time, a complete inversion. I’m a slow photographer though, I don’t photograph everything all time, and the photos get mulled over, edited and then sent out to a few friends who might be interested. I always think I will eventually use some photos as part of a production design but I never do. I’d like to think I’m training my eye but maybe my eye is as sharp as it’s going to get.
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Susanne Sasic was born in New York City in 1964. She lives in New Jersey. She is a lighting designer and production designer of concert tours and has worked with Nirvana, Sonic Youth, R.E.M., the White Stripes, St. Vincent, David Byrne, Arcade Fire, Stereolab, and Beck.